Only in Death, page 23
Outside was a bleak place. The air smoked with lightly blown dust and the sky far above was stained the colour of an old bruise. The hatchway opened into a gulley, a high-sided ravine with slopes made of loose scree and tumbled boulders that centuries of gales had brought down the mountainside.
Rawne picked his way down towards the bottom of the gulley. He could see the three scouts moving ahead of him, low and careful. He turned slowly. He could see the craggy shelves of the house and the cliff face rising behind him, above the hatchway. The hatch itself was half-buried in scree. Before the hatch had opened, there would have been no obvious clue that there was a gate there at all.
The gulley was quite broad at the mouth, and it evidently lay adjacent to and separate from the main pass leading to the gatehouse: a side entrance, a secondary port. The enemy clearly didn’t know about it, or they’d have used it during the last assault instead of climbing up and coming in over the roofs.
Rawne’s bead clicked.
He moved down the gulley towards the mouth, where the scouts were waiting. He had almost reached them when the intervox in his ear shouted, ‘Contact! Main gate!’
Rawne didn’t reply. He started to run, and joined the scouts. They’d bellied down amongst the jumbled stones at the end of the gulley, looking right.
Rawne got down with them. Bonin handed him a scope and pointed.
As Rawne had surmised, the gulley opened out into the eastern side of the dust bowl in front of the main gate. The approach pass, grim and high-sided, lay to their left. The gatehouse was about five hundred metres west of them.
It was under attack.
Despite the sobbing moan of the wind and the curious acoustics of the pass, Rawne had been able to hear the noise of the attack from the moment he cleared the end of the gulley, the steady, gong-like beat of a ram against metal, intoning like a bell, the snarl and shout of men, the batter of drums.
More than a hundred Blood Pact warriors had gathered around the main gate, chanting and shouting as the ram-team heaved and swung their heavy device. Banners flapped in the mountain air.
Additional packs of enemy warriors were trudging in across the dust bowl to join the mass. Rawne could see the spiked ladders they were carrying, or dragging, across the dust. They were preparing for another scale assault.
Rawne opened his intervox. ‘This is Rawne. Any contact from the top galleries? Anything from the north?’
‘Negative, sir. It’s quiet up there.’
‘Keep watch. Full alert. They may come at any time. Be advised, the enemy is about to mount a scale assault of the south face. All defences are ordered to open fire only when they have clear targets on the wall. No wasting ammo.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I mean it.’
‘Sir.’
Rawne paused. ‘This is Rawne again. Who’s commanding the gate?’
‘Captain Daur, sir.’
‘Get him some support, another company at least. I think he’s about to need it.’
Rawne glanced at the three scouts.
‘We could move in around them,’ Bonin said.
‘Go on.’
Bonin gestured back down the gulley at the new gate. ‘Bring a company or two out this way, we could be into them from the right flank before they know it, and do a lot of hurt.’
Rawne nodded.
‘Well?’ asked Bonin.
Rawne took a deep breath. The idea was deliciously tempting. He could imagine how much damage a surprise counter-strike might do.
‘No,’ he said.
‘No, sir?’
‘No, Bonin. We hit them like that, they’ll know we’ve found another way out. They’ll come back this way and find the other gate.’
‘But–’
‘That second gate is our little secret. It’s an advantage we didn’t know we had, but we’re only going to get one use out of it, so we’ve got to make it count. We have to use it at the right moment, for the best effect.’
‘Isn’t this the right moment, begging your pardon?’ asked Jajjo.
‘Feth, I wish it was,’ said Rawne. ‘I’d like to get my silver wet today. But I think we need to save it. Tactically, it could be much more important later.’
The three scouts nodded, but they didn’t seem convinced.
‘It’s how Gaunt would have played it,’ Rawne said.
‘Really?’ asked Bonin sceptically. ‘How can you be so sure?’
‘Because if he was here, he’d be telling us to wait, and I’d be the one telling him he was a fething idiot.’
There was a sudden burst of noise from the main gate. The first ladders had hooked up the walls, and the Blood Pact storming up them had been met with gunfire from the casemates and the overlooks above. Las-bolts spat down from the gunslots like bright rain, and many red-clad figures jerked and tumbled back down the lower cliffs, rolling and bouncing limply. Explosions began to bloom like desert flowers, brief gouts of fire that left fox-tails of black smoke trailing off into the sky when they had gone. Two spiked ladders, laden with enemy troopers, tore free and went slithering and cascading down the steep revetment of the lower house. Rawne could hear screams and yelling, voices raised in both pain and war cry. The firing grew more intense. Rockets banged off from the ground outside the gate and curled in to strike the upper casemates. Blood Pact crews with mortars and bomb-launchers had set up outside the gatehouse, and began to crank their machines to lob explosives up the walls. Fire and shrapnel skittered back down the cliff.
‘Let’s go back and secure the new gate,’ said Rawne. ‘We’ll keep it open and under watch so we can see what’s out here, and close it if we need to.’
‘I’ll stay put,’ said Bonin. ‘We could use a spotter. First sign of trouble, I can double time back to the gate and get it shut.’
‘Just stay out of sight,’ Rawne told him.
He headed back up the gulley with Livara and Jajjo. Behind him, he could distinctly hear the Clang! Clang! Clang! of the iron ram striking the main hatch.
II
‘Where do you suppose you’re going?’ Hark asked.
He was limping down the hallway towards the main gate on his crutch, moving through the tail end of Daur’s men. They were agitated, and some had risen to their feet instead of crouching by the walls as instructed.
‘Get back down and get ready!’ Hark ordered, thumping past. The repetitive slam of the ram up ahead was dismal and chilling, and he could appreciate why the men were close to snapping. Hark understood their fear, but lack of formation discipline simply couldn’t be permitted. He drew his pistol.
‘Get ready! Ready now! Glory of Tanith! Spirit of Verghast! Fury of Belladon! They’re going to come at us and we’re going to give them death! What will we give them?’
‘Death!’ the chorus came back.
‘That’s more like it!’
Some of the men cheered. Others shook themselves and tightened their grips on their weapons. Hark realised he was wishing, hoping, begging for the main gate to just get on with it and cave in. The waiting was the worst part. Give the Ghosts a fight and none of them would have time to think about running.
Brutal fighting was already underway. From above, through the thick rock of the roof, they heard the muffled noises of frantic las-fire and explosions reaching them from the scale assault. The floor shook occasionally, and dislodged dust seeped fitfully from the cracked ceiling.
Hark came up the tunnel to the gatehouse. The men were lined up against the wall. He saw Ban Daur, standing ready at the tunnel mouth. Daur had four flamers drawn up ready at his back, but there were over a dozen troopers positioned down in front of him around the tunnel steps and the inner hatch. Daur had cleared all his men out of the gatehouse chamber.
‘Captain?’ Hark said.
‘Commissar.’
‘Why the feth have you pulled out of the gatehouse, Daur?’ Hark whispered in his ear. ‘Why aren’t your flamers front and centre?’
‘Who’s commanding this position, commissar?’ Daur asked.
‘Well, you, of course.’
‘Thank you. I know what I’m about. The men know what’s expected. Support me. Don’t question me.’
Hark had never seen Daur so firm, so bloody determined.
‘Absolutely,’ Hark said, with a courteous nod.
The outer hatch was badly deformed. With each successive blow of the ram outside, it buckled even further, tearing away from its frame. They could hear, quite clearly, the shouts and bellows of the enemy right outside, clamouring to get in.
Clang! The hatch bent. Clang! The lip of it twisted inwards. Clang! A hinge began to shear. Clang! The middle of the hatch distended like a fat man’s belly.
‘We hold the outer hatch, we kill a few of them,’ Daur whispered to Hark. ‘I want to kill a lot of them. The gate chamber is our killing ground. It bottles them up and leaves them ready for slaughter.’
Hark nodded. He understood.
‘You may tell the company to fix, commissar,’ said Daur.
‘G Company!’ Hark yelled, turning to aim his voice back down the tunnel. ‘Straight silver!’
A clatter of locking blades answered him.
‘Fixed and ready!’ Haller called back.
‘Fixed and ready, captain,’ Hark said.
‘Any moment now!’ Daur shouted. ‘Remember who you are! And remember Ibram Gaunt!’
The company, to a man, roared its approval. The sound drowned out the beat of the ram.
The sound drowned out the metal screech of the hatch finally sundering.
Screaming like feral shades loosed from the depths of the warp, the Blood Pact stormed the gatehouse. The hatch had only partially fallen in, and they came pouring in, over and around its bulk, streaming, as it seemed to Hark, like rats, like a swarm of rodent vermin spewing out of a duct across the belly hold of a mass conveyance, flowing like a tide over any and all obstructions. Grim figures in red, their filthy uniforms adorned with strings of finger bones and human teeth, came scrambling through the opening, howling out of the mouth slits of their black iron masks, their eyes bright with bestial lust. Some fired weapons, others brandished trench axes and mauls. The reek and noise of them was appalling.
The first of their wild shots hit the floor, the roof, and the frame of the inner hatchway. A Ghost in the front rank went over.
‘Fire!’ Daur yelled.
The dozen or so Ghosts crouching around the inner hatchway opened fire, cutting into the front of the swarming tide as it surged towards them. Enemy warriors buckled and fell, or stumbled, wounded, and were promptly smashed down by the brute men rushing in behind them. There was a sudden stink of blood and crisped flesh. The Ghosts kept firing. Daur was firing too. Hark raised his pistol and lanced energy beams into the oncoming mass, incinerating some, violently dismembering others. In seconds, the leading ranks of the storm force were dead, just corpses carried forward by the press behind.
The tide faltered slightly. The Blood Pact warriors began struggling to clamber over bodies to reach their foe. Some tripped and fell. Las-fire knocked others off their feet. The close confines of the gate chamber degenerated a bewildering blur of bodies and yelling, motion and shots, almost incomprehensible in its violent confusion.
In the first ten seconds after the fall of the hatch, the Blood Pact lost forty warriors in the gate chamber, for the cost of only two Ghosts. Daur’s killing ground had been expertly achieved.
But Ban Daur’s ambitions were greater. As the gate chamber filled to capacity with storming enemy troops, with more shoving in behind, and the front of their assault almost at the inner hatch, Daur turned.
‘Switch! Now!’ he yelled above the din.
The Ghosts at the hatch who had been holding the enemy at bay with rifle fire suddenly rose and fell back, firing as they went. Daur pulled Hark to one side.
The flame-troopers stepped up, line abreast, and took their places, facing the charge.
‘Flames, flames!’ Brostin yelled.
He triggered his burner. At his side, Lubba, Dremmond and Lyse did the same. The result was devastating. The heat wash shock-sucked back down the tunnel and made Daur, Hark and the Ghosts around them gasp and shield their faces. The four flamers stood side by side in the inner hatch and streamed liquid fire into the entry chamber of the gatehouse.
There was nowhere to run or hide. There was nowhere to escape from the conflagration. The seething inferno ripped back across the chamber all the way to the broken hatch, and then blasted outside into the open, into the iron-masked faces of enemy warriors packed tight and clawing to get in.
Inside the furnace of the gate chamber, the monstrous destruction was stoked by grenades and ammo packs touching off and exploding. Stumbling, burning figures, ablaze from head to foot, blew apart as grenades in their packs and musette bags caught and detonated.
The fire made a whining, keening sound as it swirled around the chamber, spinning up to scorch the roof. It was licking, leaping and surging as if it was alive. It was almost too bright to look at, and the writhing black shapes inside it almost too terrible to bear. The scream of the fire reminded Hark of the shriek of the wind that punished Jago, day and night, eternal, primordial and hungry.
The burns across his back ached in blistering sympathy. It felt good to pay back that pain with flames.
III
The Ghost manning the slot to Kolea’s left suddenly took three rapid steps backwards, swayed, and collapsed flat on his back.
‘Medic!’ Kolea yelled, continuing to fire down out of the slot at the enemy figures on the walls below him. His overlook wasn’t the only one where someone was shouting for a doctor. Kolea had started the fight with five men in the box, and now only Derin and Obel’s adjutant, Dafelbe, remained upright.
‘Medic!’ Kolea yelled again. ‘Medic here!’ He aimed out, saw a scrambling figure ascending through the smoke below, and squeezed off two shots. The enemy warrior crumbled and half fell, his arm snagging on the side of the storm ladder he’d been scaling. Hooked, the warrior struggled. Before Kolea could shoot again, the warrior’s own comrades had heaved him off the ladder out of their way. He fell into the smoke. Derin put a round right through the face of the first man up behind him.
‘Need ammo,’ Derin growled.
‘I know,’ said Kolea.
‘Soon,’ Derin added.
A whooping rocket hit the top lip of their slot and showered them with grit as it exploded.
‘Too close,’ coughed Dafelbe.
Kolea looked out again, shots whining up past him. He saw the Blood Pact on the nearest ladder passing up another coiled length of scaling rungs, man to man, making ready to cast it up the next stretch of wall. Kolea fired at them.
The warrior at the top of the ladder, anxious to protect the ladder-bearers below him, unpinned a stick grenade and swung back to pitch it up at the slot.
‘I don’t think so,’ said Kolea, taking a pot shot.
The warrior toppled back off the ladder, and his grenade dropped in amongst the men immediately beneath him. The blast took the ladder away from the rock face in a thud of smoke and sparks.
Kolea had no time to feel satisfied. Heavy fire began to chop in from the right. The raiders had succeeded in getting another scaling ladder right up under the overlook next to them. The Blood Pact warriors at the top of it were fighting hand-to hand with the men in the slot, hacking to gain entry. Those lower down on the swaying ladder section were shooting sideways at Kolea’s position.
‘Feth it!’ Kolea said, trying to return fire. The angle was poor.
‘Derin! Do what you can!’ Kolea cried, backing away from the window.
‘Where are you going?’
‘Just do it!’
Kolea ran out of the overlook, along the connecting hallway and into the adjacent casemate box.
The gunslot there was full of hacking, flailing limbs and snarling grotesks. Pabst, Vadim and Zayber were fighting to keep them out, but Pabst was wounded in the arm and Vadim could barely see for the blood streaming down his face.
‘Shoot them!’ Kolea cried, coming in behind them.
‘No ammo!’ Vadim screamed. A trench axe crunched into Zayber’s neck and he staggered backwards, spewing blood.
Kolea snapped his carbine to full auto. ‘Ghosts drop!’ he yelled. Vadim lurched aside, pulling Pabst with him.
Kolea raked the gunslot with rapid las, blowing chunks and lumps out of the rockcrete sills. The enemy warriors choking the slot screamed and jerked as rounds ripped into them. Some fell out and disappeared instantly, others yowled and held on, clawing at the edges of the firing position, weighed down by the dead and wounded.
‘Run! Get some ammo!’ Kolea shouted at Pabst. He kept firing, blowing off fingers and hands, dislodging grips. A Blood Pact warrior tried to lunge bodily in through the slit, and Kolea blew him open across the shoulder, dropping his corpse onto the firestep inside the slot.
Kolea ran to the step and pulled two stick bombs out of the corpse’s webbing panniers. He yanked the pins out and posted them out over the slit edge. There was a meaty double thud.
Pabst came running back in with a bag of clips. He was closely followed by Merrt, Vivvo and Tokar.
‘What are you?’ Kolea asked them.
‘Gn…gn… gn… reinforcements,’ said Merrt.
‘Rawne sent a company down from topside to back you up,’ said Vivvo.
‘Get to the slot. Good to see you,’ Kolea nodded. He went back into the corridor, moving through the fresh troops joining the overlook deck.
‘Spread out! Fill the gaps!’ he heard Corporal Chiria yelling down the smoke-washed run.
He went back to his original position, and found that Derin and Dafelbe had been joined by two Ghosts. One was Kaydey, a Belladon marksman firing a long-las. The other was Tona Criid.
The side of her head was bandaged. With grim concentration, she was firing snapshots from the corner of the slot.
